WaPo: Yeah, Morgan got pwned last night

posted at 12:41 pm on January 11, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Normally I’d be tempted to just add this as an update to the previous post, but it’s just too delicious not to highlight on its own. As Duane wrote in his GR post, Piers Morgan went from his embarrassing display in his interview with Ben Shapiro to lamenting about Shapiro’s “intransigent” performance with Mark Kelly afterward. Eric Wemple at the Washington Post confirms that Shapiro wasn’t intransigent — he was just a lot smarter than Morgan and beat him at his own game:

And Piers Morgan struggled to find the appropriate strategy for dismissing Ben Shapiro, editor-at-large of Breitbart.com and a foe of extraordinary polemical agility. He started in on Morgan by contending that the CNN star had exploited the dead children of Newtown …

Patented outrage spilled from Morgan: “How dare you.” And then the conversation took a turn for the better, as Shapiro cornered the CNN host on a central disconnect of the ongoing gun-violence debate: Proposals are floating around to redo the ban on assault rifles, something Morgan supports. But Shapiro wonders ….

Wemple then excerpts Shapiro’s challenge to Morgan on handguns. Murders by rifle are relatively rare, more rare than murders by knives, for example. Most murders by firearm involve handguns — so why isn’t Morgan backing a handgun ban, too? Wemple cuts out the best part of Shapiro’s pushback, though:

SHAPIRO: This is what I wanted to ask you, Piers, because I have seen you talk about assault weapons a lot, and I have seen Mark Kelly talk about assault weapons. The vast majority of murders in this country that are committed with guns are committed with handguns, they are not committed assault weapons. Are you willing to ban handguns in this country, across this country?

MORGAN: No, that’s not what I’m asking for.

SHAPIRO: Why not? Don’t you care about the kids who are being killed in Chicago as much as the kids in Sandy Hook?

That’s the exact kind of argument that Morgan uses on his guests, but can’t handle when used back on him. Wemple points out that Morgan seemed completely unprepared for his own tactics to be used on himself, and for Shapiro’s preparation:

Where Jones proved needy of a background screening, Shapiro was rational and on point. Where Jones failed to directly address Morgan’s points, Shapiro went right at them. Where Jones monologued, Shapiro got through his points quickly and shut up.
All those skills came in handy as Morgan tried to trap Shapiro by noting that Ronald Reagan had supported curbs on assault weapons:

MORGAN: One of the great right-wing presidents of modern times agreed with me.

Shapiro’s priceless retort: “So?”

It’s what happens in a battle of wits when one side is only half-armed. In truth, it doesn’t take “extreme polemical agility” to beat a poorly-informed journalistic bully like Morgan … but it certainly helps.

Update II: In a more serious vein, Michael Moynihan perfectly captures the dishonesty of Morgan and his entire approach:

None of this should be surprising, coming as it does from a disgraced former tabloid editor and ex-talent show judge. Indeed, a quick look at Morgan’s oeuvre, which includes stints at the News of the World, which was shuttered during the phone hacking scandal, and the Daily Mirror, from which he was fired for publishing fake photos of British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners, and one understands that Morgan is incapable of nuance. Take his description of supermodel Kate Moss, whom he dismissed as a “drunken, foul-mouthed, ill-mannered, paranoid Croydon girl with a cocaine- desecrated hooter and spots.” Her ex-boyfriend Pete Doherty, former guitar player in The Libertines, a seminal British post-punk band, is a “filthy talentless junkie who can’t sing.” They are funny lines, for sure, but one needn’t rush to YouTube to discover that Morgan is even more contemptuous of Second Amendment enthusiasts.

This is not an argument about the wisdom of owning an AR-15 or the judiciousness of outlawing certain high-capacity clips, but of the silliness of the Drudge and Morgan-style debate, which has abandoned reason for moral outrage. To disagree with Piers Morgan is to argue in bad faith, to be opposed to common sense, to be an uncaring, unfeeling tool of the gun lobby. Former CNN host Larry King, who Morgan replaced in 2011, told the Huffington Post this week that the show was now “all about the host,” where “the guest becomes the prop to the host.”

The Leveson Report on phone hacking in the British tabloid industry noted that in 2003 Morgan sent an email to a police officer who had complained about a story in The Daily Mirror, shrugging that “fame and crime sends most of the usual rules out of the window.” Morgan is himself famous, and has now taken it upon himself to adjudicate the complicated issue of crime—the thorny issue of America’s gun culture—by having shouting matches with paranoiacs like Alex Jones and Jesse Ventura. And in the process, he has, as promised, tossed the rules of responsible journalism out the window.

Nothing on his resumé indicates Morgan ever cared about “responsible journalism” in the first place.

Update III: Jim Treacher compares Morgan’s Twitter feed after the Alex Jones appearance and after last night’s train wreck. Don’t be surprised to find a heapin’ helping of hypocrisy.

Breaking on Hot Air

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

Yeah.. it’s paranoid and moronic to want an AR-15 because you might actually believe your government could turn tyrannical down the road… and yet is completely logical for the government to distrust us so much that they make us strip at airports, do full body naked scans, put their hands in your pants, check baby’s diapers and so forth.

Yeah.. it’s absolutely logical that the government should consider us a threat… but we’re all just being paranoid to consider government might become a threat to us.

Why is the government flying drones now in the US? Why did census workers take our home’s GPS co-ordinates? They laugh at us for buy ammo but why are a whole host of government agencies buying millions of rounds of ammo the past 4 years?
Why have they done questionnaires on our troops asking if they would fire on American citizens?

Why is the government never called paranoid for doing things like putting out memos to local police dept. about the dangers of people who have pro-life bumper stickers?

No.. the American people aren’t the ones paranoid.. but we are responding to the paranoia of this administration.

MORGAN: One of the great right-wing presidents of modern times agreed with me.

Shapiro’s priceless retort: “So?”

The exact response used so often by Breitbart and the one he recommended others use as often as possible. Nice work, Ben.

However, Shapiro missed an opportunity there – though I don’t blame him as he didn’t have the info shown on screen. The date of the letter signed by former Presidents Reagan, Ford and Carter was 1994 – clearly written in support of the 1994 assault weapon ban.

So although yes, a conservative former President “agreed” with Morgan, the actual legislation was brought by a Democrat Congress and signed by a Democrat President. It also happened to be a spectacular failure that had almost zero impact on crime and expired ten years later to great applause.

Piers Morgan pontificated that no one needs an AR-15 for self protection. Two under-reported stories disprove his self-righteousness.

A 15 year old man in Texas used his father’s AR-15 and shoot two home invaders when he was alone with his 12 year old sister in the middle of the day.

A Georgia mother fled with her two kids upstairs, behind a locked bedroom door, behind a locked bathroom door and into a crawlspace before emptying a 38 into a home invader who was still able to drive away after she ran out of bullets. What would have happened to her if there had been two invaders?

Thanks for your insightful comments, Mr Morgan.
Going out target practicing this weekend: I’ll be sure to bring an extra box of ammunition, in your honor.
And, while I’ve never owned an AR15 (not really useful for me), I’ve spoken with my local gun store to put in an order for a domestically made .223 AR clone.

Because you’re a d****bag, Piers Morgan. And buying a weapon you despise, exercising a Constitutional right that you neither respect, nor as an ALIEN, are not entitled to share, is the best way to show my utter disdain for you as a liberal, elitist weasel.

No, the people hardest hit will be people with me. You know the ones you supposedly passed Obamacare for; the ones with chornic preexisting conditions. People like me who don’t need pain pills regularly but may have to go to the ER when my condition flares up because it takes MONTHS to get into see a rheumatologist and the wait will be even longer with Obamacare.

You liberals are idiots. You don’t care about anybody but your damn self, and the power you may have over people.

No, the people hardest hit will be people with me. You know the ones you supposedly passed Obamacare for; the ones with chornic preexisting conditions. People like me who don’t need pain pills regularly but may have to go to the ER when my condition flares up because it takes MONTHS to get into see a rheumatologist and the wait will be even longer with Obamacare.

You liberals are idiots. You don’t care about anybody but your damn self, and the power you may have over people.

melle1228 on January 11, 2013 at 5:15 PM

LOL- Wrong board. I am just fed up with liberals if it gun grabbing; it’s pain pill restrictions.

If I owned any guns, and my reading of the second amendment is correct, I’d own the guns to keep the government from taking them away. Or anyone else for that matter. I would also own them to protect family and country from harm.

I was so frustrated watching that video, that I was nearly yelling at the screen. Ben set things up to point out the inconsistency in the Left’s public opinion (with respect to handguns versus “assault weapons”), and I kept waiting for Ben to land the haymaker when Piers was listing all sorts of events involving “assault weapons”.

I kept wanting Ben to bring it home by point out that the deadliest school shooting in the history of the US was Virginia Tech, where 32 were killed and 56 wounded… and that was accomplished via two handguns.

That would have set up the true argument-ender: that almost without exception, every single one of those events took place in a “gun free zone”, where the killer knew that no one would be legally carrying to stop them before it became a “mass shooting”.

That would have laid to rest the notion that “what they have in common” was “assault weapons”, and pointed out the true commonality: We keep having circumstances where what should have been a much smaller incident becomes massive, because we’ve allowed these zones where killers know that they have a large pool of unarmed victims, and no one there to stop them.

The sole exception to that rule of commonality is the Gabby Giffords shooting, and the only reason that didn’t conform to the pattern is that it was an assassination attempt, and there are remarkably few “gun free zones” anywhere in the vicinity of where Giffords was going to be when that whack-job wanted to kill her.

The effect of pointing those unarguable truths could have been utterly devastating, and more importantly, those truths would have been much more widely propagated as the video of this made its inevitable rounds.

In all, it was an excellent performance, but it still feels like an opportunity wasted, and I had those responses on the tip of my tongue in real-time while watching the video, so it struck me as sad that Ben didn’t bring those to bear.

Despite that, I’m a fan of Ben and the service he’s done in this matter.

r keller, you put your finger on why I hate Toryism. Tories think they are our “betters” and even though they contain some grains of conservative ideology in their beliefs and perhaps even detest collectivism, they still come out on the wrong side of so many issues.

neither my friends and i care enough to bother with little shits running their mouths.

sesquipedalian on January 11, 2013 at 3:14 PM

In other words…you and you and your alleged friends are just cowards.

[Better not push too hard for that civil war, pumpkin. The military is not on your side; and neither are most of the cops. You might be forced to (try to) do some of the wet work yourself…with predictably bad results.]

The reliable Andrew Breitbart retort. Glad to see his memory is alive. Charlie Rose played a clip of him during a tribute to the people who died last year. He was one of the few who could go to a lefty interview and own it.

If they could have, they would have danced around, holding a child’s corpse and calling us names.
The corpses of children are just props for them (unless they are poor, black and brown children in Chicago – then they aren’t so useful. They’re just an embarrassment.).

[Better not push too hard for that civil war, pumpkin. The military is not on your side; and neither are most of the cops. You might be forced to (try to) do some of the wet work yourself…with predictably bad results.]

Solaratov on January 11, 2013 at 7:05 PM

These cowards expect others to put their lives on the line while they will be sitting at home in the safety provided by Secret Service (entertaining hookers, of course, simultaneously). And that’s Hussein, Senile Idiot and Congress. What little people don’t get is that THEIR safety will be great jeopardy once “confiscation raids” start.

Shapiro was doing ok in a policy wonk sort of way until he said he feared a possible tyranny in the next 50 100 years? What exactly does he think is happening in the US right now, and how does he measure it? The horizon is more like 10 or so years, not 50-100 years.

Larry King, who Morgan replaced in 2011, told the Huffington Post this week that the show was now “all about the host,” where “the guest becomes the prop to the host.”

Whoever wrote that obviously never watched or listened to Larry King.LOL
The guy (King) was and is a 1st Class Sleazebag. Just ask all the people he ripped off over the years. They still want their money back.
Don’t hold up an old phart as a “role model” when he was every bit as sleazy as his replacement.
Ya see, that’s one of the problems with knee-jerk anti-liberals.
“Well, Morgan really is sleazier than King”.
Okay … So What?
~(Ä)~

Shapiro was doing ok in a policy wonk sort of way until he said he feared a possible tyranny in the next 50 100 years? What exactly does he think is happening in the US right now, and how does he measure it? The horizon is more like 10 or so years, not 50-100 years.

Tripwhipper on January 11, 2013 at 9:53 PM

I am thinking Shapiro simply wanted to point out that if they ban “gun grandfathering” it will take that long for current gun owners to die and leave no guns in general populace. Makes sense to some extent.

Why is the United States making a millionaire out of a disgraced journalist?

Cindy Munford on January 12, 2013 at 1:34 PM

The same reason we can come up with money for fat sassy Democrat minorities to buy nail jobs and Ipods, but have to slash the military to the bone. And I say this as someone who’s sick of our “Little Jack Horner” foreign policy.

MORGAN: One of the great right-wing presidents of modern times agreed with me.

Shapiro’s priceless retort: “So?”

The exact response used so often by Breitbart and the one he recommended others use as often as possible. Nice work, Ben.

However, Shapiro missed an opportunity there – though I don’t blame him as he didn’t have the info shown on screen. The date of the letter signed by former Presidents Reagan, Ford and Carter was 1994 – clearly written in support of the 1994 assault weapon ban.

So although yes, a conservative former President “agreed” with Morgan, the actual legislation was brought by a Democrat Congress and signed by a Democrat President. It also happened to be a spectacular failure that had almost zero impact on crime and expired ten years later to great applause.

Missy on January 11, 2013 at 4:18 PM

Ben might have also pointed out that Ronald Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease in 1993 – the year before that letter was signed.